2024 State of the Newsletter

What I've changed and what I've learned in 2024.

At the end of 2023, I announced the “relaunch” of my newsletter. I was going to publish contributors in the Desk Dispatch, turn one Monday piece per month into the Desk Digest, start the Desk Book Club, and make my Friday posts for paid subscribers more intimate and personable with Recommends… and the Monthly Menu.

The impetus for all this change was that I knew—but readers did not—that I’d sold another book, the forthcoming On Eating: The Making and Unmaking of My Appetites, and I wanted time to focus on it. In 2023, freelance assignments were already drying up, and I forecasted an even lighter 2024. I wanted to rely on the newsletter as my regular income while I focused on my book, and this lighter load of essay writing would allow me to do so. I was also hopeful that publishing contributors would be fruitful in terms of paid subscriptions and gain attention.

Always at work.

The relaunch was successful in terms of lightening my load enough that I finished a first draft of my book in eight months. I had to stop running the Desk Dispatch midway through the year because, even though I loved these essays and they got great feedback from my most dedicated readers, they did not convert new paid subscribers and ended up losing me a lot of money during a time when I wasn’t making as much to begin with; it was obvious early in 2024 that people were struggling—there were many, many failed payments costing me hundreds per month—and I’m sure my switch from publishing recipes to taking a more conversational approach to paid subscriptions and focusing energy on a book club lost people.

All of this would’ve been something I could’ve recovered from in time, but in the middle of summer, we found out our landlord wanted to sell our apartment. This caused utter panic, but I decided to launch a newsletter workshop I’d been commissioned to do for a business group as a public offering. The workshop, and the subsequent building of a research one, have radically transformed my income—meaning, they’ve increased my monthly revenue by 75%. I’m proud of this simply because I’m also not charging an exorbitant amount for them. My goal in paid subscriptions and in doing workshops is accessible learning, camaraderie, and conversation.

I also pivoted a bit when I launched the weekly Salons in the chat for paid subscribers. This has been really fun and generative, and I think it’s gotten people from around the world and working in divergent fields to know each other. This is my biggest point of pride: Last week, in my first research workshops, there were people on the Zoom from Uganda, Dominica, France, Spain, Malaysia, all over the U.S., and beyond. If I can do anything with my work, I want to be a vector for people from around the world who care about food and its role in culture, politics, and ecology to find each other and to be less alone.

Aside from the newsletter and workshops, this year I certainly freelanced much less for other publications, and that’s something I’d like to change in 2025. My advance for No Meat Required paid out by the end of 2023, so I did get two royalty checks for it this year. Freelance money, royalties, and book advances are pure savings for me now—the workshops have allowed this—and I’d like to continue on that road.

In 2024, I gave talks at Bates College and UC Berkeley, and I visited classes at the Basque Culinary Center and NYU. I curated a reading called “Eat or Be Eaten” in collaboration with MOLD for the Water Street Projects’ “Yes, Chef” exhibition and did an artist talk with Camille Henrot. These are the things I wouldn’t be doing without working on this newsletter.

I have a lot of big ideas and big plans for the future. On December 30, I’ll be officially launching the Desk Salon Series, monthly hour-long conversations with writers, editors, and more whom I admire, where attendees will also be able to ask questions. Paid subscribers will have free access—the discount code is in the chat for now, but I’ll publicize it soon in email headers—it’ll be $10 for everyone else. You can check out the first four months and sign up now to secure a spot. I’ll also be recording these and sending a transcript, with audio, to paid subscribers.

My more immediate goal for 2025 is to get more paid subscribers onboard. As I noted above, the changes I’ve made have made my work life better and more in line with my own goals, but the Salons and the Book Club—they haven’t found the bigger audience they deserve. I hope they do, but I’m also going to continue to focus on diversifying my work more.

Total free subscribers as of December 2024: 40,184
Total paid subscribers as of December 2024: 2,165
(minus approximately 100 from 2023)